Addressing threats to health care's core values, especially those stemming from concentration and abuse of power. Advocating for accountability, integrity, transparency, honesty and ethics in leadership and governance of health care.

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

As we predicted (here), the new reporting requirements imposed on US not-for-profit organizations are beginning to yield interesting results about the coziness of the leadership of some health care organizations.

Western Pennsylvania

For example, we start with an article in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review about hospitals in western Pennsylvania.

Board members at Western Pennsylvania hospitals have provided legal, real estate, insurance and advertising services to their organizations, according to IRS reports examined by the Tribune-Review.

The reports, which cover the fiscal year ending June 30, 2009, are the first under new reporting requirements imposed on nonprofit hospitals by the IRS. Still more requirements will kick in next year.

Details of the filings by the two largest area health care firms, UPMC and West Penn Allegheny, were made public last month. UPMC reported $10 million and West Penn reported $5 million in dealings with board members or top executives.

Five other major nonprofit health care providers reported business dealings with board members and, like UPMC and West Allegheny, cited in-place reporting and monitoring systems to avert or minimize any conflict of interest.

The specifics include this about Ohio Valley General Hospital:

At Ohio Valley General Hospital, the tax return shows two relatives of the chief executive officer are on the payroll.

Dr. David Provenzano, son of CEO William F. Provenzano, was paid $613,781 in salary and benefits. The CEO's daughter-in-law, Dr. Dana Dellapiazzo, was paid $130,525.

David Provenzano is the medical director of the hospital's pain center. Dellapiazzo is an anesthesiologist.

About Excela Health:

At Excela Health, which operates the Westmoreland Regional Hospital and two other hospitals, a company part owned by CEO David Gallatin was paid $253,835 for direct mail services.

Excela reported payments of $683,250 to Westmoreland Emergency Medicine, which employs board member Dr. Robert Whipkey.

About Washington Hospital:

At Washington Hospital, board member Thomas Northrop's Observer-Reporter newspaper was paid $212,071 for advertising services. The hospital paid $308,185 in premiums to the Campbell Insurance Agency, where board member John Campbell is an owner.

About Jefferson Regional Medical Center:

Jefferson Regional Medical Center in Jefferson Hills, according to its report, paid $151,940 in legal fees to the law firm of board member Gregory Harbaugh. It paid $331,280 in real estate commissions to the firm run by board member Kevin Langholz.
The hospital paid $75,035 to the Thorpe Reed law firm where board member Anne Mulaney works.

About St. Clair Hospital:

At St. Clair Hospital in Mt Lebanon, a radiology firm that employs Dr. Donald Orr, who is a board member, was paid $1.95 million for providing medical services, according to the hospital's filing.

The hospital paid $80,000 for insurance related services to the HGH Group headed by hospital board member Bryan Hondru.

The head of Catholic Medical Center, whose salary is being questioned by the Attorney General's Office, has two offspring and two step-children employed or in one case recently employed there, the hospital acknowledged.

A hospital official defended its hiring practices, saying no favoritism is shown and that of the 11 members of senior CMC management, seven have relatives who either work or have worked at the hospital, some on a per-diem basis.

Executive Vice President Ray Bonito said his own son held a per-diem job during college. Offspring of trustees can also work at the hospital, he said.

Alyson Pitman Giles has been CMC president and chief executive officer since 1999. Her bid to intertwine CMC with Dartmouth-Hitchcock Health has been stalled by the New Hampshire attorney general, who deemed it an acquisition of CMC and said it violates state law and would need court approval.

CMC provided the following information on Giles' four relatives.

-- Son Seth Pitman has worked per-diem over the past several years. Late last month, the hospital said he was working as a project writer in the marketing office. But last week, the hospital said he is not actively employed there.

-- Daughter Sarah Pitman manages a primary-care physician practice. The hospital has not said when she started at that job. She was a hospital volunteer from June 1999 to January 2001, when she started working per-diem.

Two Giles stepchildren are also employed at the West Side hospital.

-- Stepdaughter Megan DeSantis is a physician assistant at Surgical Care Group, where she was hired six years ago. CMC acquired the group in May 2009.

-- Stepson William Giles is a physician recruiter. He started as a program analyst with the IT department in June 2000 and received several promotions over the last 10 years, CMC said.

Summary

The defenses for hiring top leaders' relatives, and doing business with top leaders' firms were similar in both locations. For example, in western Pennsylvania,

All reported that any dealings with connected firms individuals were 'at arm's length' with prices set at 'fair market value.'

In New Hampshire,

'It's not just a question for hospitals,' Bonito said of hiring relatives. 'It's a question for all companies.'

What's important, he said, is that a strict process be followed.

'Everyone goes through the same process. I don't care whose kids they are,' said Bonito. 'Everyone gets treated the same. We hire the most qualified candidate.'

It all smacks of an excess of coziness. One wonders if there was any effort made to find other candidates when the CEO's family members showed up, or to find any other vendors when the board members' firms were available. Maybe they could have found writers, physician recruiters, and even physicians other than the immediate family members of the hospital CEO. Maybe they could have found direct mail companies, advertising agencies, and law firms available where no relatives of the CEO work, and which were not run by hospital trustees. However, rejecting a CEO's child, or a board member's firm may require an independence of spirit rarely found in today's bureaucratic health care environment. Instead, it may be easier to "go along to get along."

Once hired, furthermore, even when there are "processes and procedures" in place, it may become all to easy to treat the CEO's relatives differently than run of the mill employees, and to treat the trustees' firms differently than the usual vendors. That is where the real conflicts of interest set in. The sort of coziness that allows hiring leaders' relatives and doing business with leaders' firms could soon lead to confusion between leaders' interests and the institutions' mission. However, leaders of hospitals and other not-for-profit health care organizations have a duty to put the mission of the organization ahead of their personal interests.

In my humble opinion, this sort of coziness, this sort of fuzziness at the boundaries of institutional duties and personal interests, may be a fundamental reason that our current health care system has become so solicitous of the interests and prerogatives of its leaders, and so cold to the needs of patients and the values of professionals.
The need for more transparent, accountable leadership of health care who explicitly are subject to clear ethical rules was never more apparent.

2 comments:

Anonymous
said...

As polluted as the GOM; as corrupt as BP; as deceptive as the HIT vendors and vendors' trade group HIM$$ together with offspring C$HIT and e-Health Policy Institute and their Congressional "education" programs replete with revolving doors to US Government.

It is far worse than reported yet for those that point it out, your career is over. So as in other posts here show, the wrong doers get off and continue to be rewarded, the honest folks get whacked. Things are opposite of what it should be.

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